Col Sergei Skripal – who is currently in intensive care after he and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a suspected nerve agent – was recruited by MI6 while working at the British embassy in Estonia, according to Russian intelligence services.

When Russia discovered that Skripal had allegedly been paid $100,000 by MI6 to expose undercover Russian intelligence agents in 2006 – the same year Russian double-agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 2010, however, Skripal was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for 10 US spies – after which he moved to the UK and befriended an employee of Christopher Steele.

The Telegraph understands that Col Skripal moved to Salisbury in 2010 in a spy swap and became close to a security consultant employed by Christopher Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier. –Telegraph

A recently deleted LinkedIn account revealed that the British security consultant is based in Salisbury, and his employer is Orbis Business Intelligence – Steele’s firm. Steele notoriously assembled a series of memos containing anti-Trump opposition research to Fusion GPS, the first seventeen of which were compiled into the unverified “Trump-Russia” dossier which the FBI relied on to obtain a spy warrant against a Trump campaign associate.

UK media is buzzing about the drama surrounding Skripal, with some going as far as calling it an “absolutely brazen, full-on challenge to Britain,” by Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Police have called in the British military to help investigate the attempted murders.

The assassination attempts come amid reports that Steele knew that the Clinton campaign was footing the bill for the anti-Trump dossier and yet the FBI never included this information in its FISA court application for Carter Page.

Steele, who was tasked with compiling the ‘Trump dossier’ for opposition research firm Fusion GPS, has admitted in court that the discredited document contains “limited intelligence.”